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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26853328">Spells</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mauser_Frau/pseuds/Mauser_Frau'>Mauser_Frau</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Borderlands (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Blood, Child Neglect, Chronic Illness, Deceased parent, Gen, Hunting, Sibling Relationship, Violence, Vomit, and all of that happening to a very young Troy, medical content, migraines</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:00:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,513</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26853328</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mauser_Frau/pseuds/Mauser_Frau</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Album Version of "Mama's Rings".  Troy deals with his illness alone after his mother's death.  There might just be a medical explanation for it, but that possibility leaves him with more questions than answers when it comes to Leda.</p><p>Part of the Nekrotafeyo portion of <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Grimeverse/profile">Grimeverse</a>.  Companion story of "<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28249140">Spiraling To Meet Me</a>".</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Grimeverse</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Spells</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>1.</p><p>In his very first clear memory, he’s crying.  A dull, throbbing ache winds through his body.  It’s worst around his middle.  There’s this sharp spot on his back too.  He squirms. </p><p>Mama holds him up on the potty chair.  She sings to him, or she says <em> hush </em>with her voice all teary, her big hands stroking his sides or his hair.</p><p>He’s terrified to be there.  He doesn’t have the words for why.  </p><p>One moment when she pauses close to his face, he grabs her thumb in his hand.  He pulls her down.  He picks over her scratched silver rings.  He still hurts, but playing with her keeps his mind off of how much. </p><p>Leda sings again.  She doesn’t hold him so tight.  But she doesn’t let him take his favorite ring off of her thumb.</p><p>“That’s mine,” she whispers, hardly missing the words of the song.</p><p>~*~</p><p>2.</p><p>Troy refuses to eat after a bad ‘spell’.  Mama makes a jammy paste out of the almost too old plums to try and tempt him.  </p><p>Ty munches on glowbugs, the really tangy orange ones.</p><p>When she tells him, the fact he missed the hunt makes him shudder.  He hates missing things.  He misses things all the time.  Troy whimpers.  “I wanted to play too. It’s not fair.” </p><p>“Just eat! You can’t throw up light!” They never say ‘magic’ about how the two of them work.  ‘Spells’ are ‘magic’, but ‘spells’ are also what Troy has. </p><p>He wonders.  There’s clearly something not OK in his belly.  Maybe he <em> can </em> throw up light.  Maybe it’ll come out of the old IV pinpricks in his veins.  Maybe his Siren markings will bleed it like stuck Djira.</p><p>Tyreen tells him she hates him and she leaves.  He thinks she’s whimpering too.  The sound of Mama and Dad arguing drowns it out though.</p><p>He starts to figure that throwing up light can’t be much worse than crying, listening, being there and knowing this fight is his fault.</p><p>After everybody’s gone to bed, Troy rolls over against his sister.  Tyreen throws her arm around him before he’s got any chance to stop her.</p><p>There’s light.  His senses fade back into clarity, one by one.  So, there’s pain too.</p><p>He stares up at the ceiling, tasting glowbugs underneath his skin.  He realizes that if he’s magic, magic must be a terrible thing.  It makes people scream and cry.  </p><p>He’s four.  Deciding this breaks his heart so badly he can’t sleep even though he’s starving in the stomach-way, and his whole, hurting little body wants nothing but sleep.</p><p>~*~</p><p>3.</p><p>Mama spends time in the medical suite with him sometimes if the homestead is set with food and fire.  It’s kind of like how Dad works on the robots.  Well, Mama helps with those too, Troy and his sister soon enough since they have tiny fingers.  They both get told no a lot for carrying screws in their teeth, but especially Tyreen since she’s got two hands and no excuse.</p><p>Troy doesn’t mind being “worked on” too.  The medical suite is simply part of the homestead to him.  A lot of his other earlier memories start and end there.  None of them scare him as bad as the really old one about the potty chair.  Some are even kind of nice, like the one where he woke up next to Tyreen and Mama had posed them like fish with the very last two of the sparkly bandages on their blood draw sites.</p><p>“It’s your shoulder.  There’s a little more that has to come out,” Mama tells him now, petting his head.  </p><p>Troy nods.  He breathes the disinfectant and the steely warmth beneath the lights.  </p><p>When he wakes up a while later, the room is dark and something is very wrong.  He knows what sutures feel like and he is covered in them.  Also, he’s alone.</p><p>He calls for Mama.  Something in his belly stabs with agony.  He catches his breath and holds his hand over his mouth.  Monitor noise fills the room.</p><p>It’s Dad who comes to get him.  “There’s my little man,” he says cheerfully.  “Wow, you were really down for the count.  Did a number on Mama too.  She’s dead to the world someplace out back.”</p><p>Troy balks, wide-eyed.  He points to where he’s hurting.</p><p>“Huh? What about your business?” Dad seems ever so slightly taken aback.</p><p>No.  Troy shakes his head.  He ends up clumsily grappling with the bedclothes while his father laughs and laughs.  Like the loop of missing skin on Troy’s stomach and the drain sticking out of the wound perfectly normal.</p><p>He can hear Tyreen whispering.  “I think she had to fix his belly button like she did mine.” Then, to him— “Can I see?”</p><p>Troy sobs and pulls the sheets up.  Not that Tyreen doesn’t end up seeing anyway.  It’s days before he can walk himself to the toilet.  Tyreen takes him.  She doesn’t complain much.</p><p>~*~</p><p>4.</p><p>Mama dies.  Dad doesn’t let Troy help dig the grave.  He has the robots do it even though they’re too precise and they don’t seem to realize not to laugh about it.</p><p>It’s that plentiful season after the rains on Nekrotafeyo when new mantas are born and there’s so much spawn and sprat in the lakes that Tyreen can go wading for supper, though Dad says that’s wasteful. </p><p>It seems deeply wrong for Mama to be gone at all, but especially then.  When everything else is alive and she’s not anymore.</p><p>Troy picks around the homestead, looking for where Dad might have put her rings.  He couldn’t have burned them.  Silver doesn’t burn.  But then where are they?</p><p>Once again and after dark, Troy goes out to Mama’s grave.  He starts to ask her, but the night is cool and whistling.  His voice seems like too much for the valley below.  Besides, he does know where one of Mama’s rings went.</p><p>Troy pulls up his shirt and plays with the round scar she left underneath his belly button.  He wonders if maybe she fixed his spells since he hasn’t had one since.  Part of him knows it’s wishful thinking.  Besides, why didn’t she tell him what she found?  Why didn’t she tell him what she was looking for at all?</p><p>The same reason she didn’t give him her ring to play with.  Some things were hers.  </p><p>When he walks back to the homestead, Tyreen’s waiting for him in the shadows, her arm tucked against the wall so she’s awfully hard to see.</p><p>“Was she there?” she asks.  </p><p>He thinks at first she’s trying to scare him, although that’s funny stuff to say if she is.  “Ah, no?” he answers like it’s normal.</p><p>Next thing, she’s fists balled up and trembling in front of him.  Troy puts his hand up to guard, thinking she’s going to hit him.  </p><p>Then she’s gone in the moonlight and he barely sees her for the next few days.  </p><p>~*~</p><p>5.</p><p>With one less person to talk to, Troy and his sister try to fill the emptiness.  Troy plays music on the worn out speaker system.  Dad tells him to shut it off and a glass gets broken somewhere West of Troy’s head.  Tyreen talks until she starts to cough.  Dad says nothing.  Troy wanders elsewhere into the homestead, fumbling over books and half-busted consoles.</p><p>He’s always read a lot.  That or Mama would read to him and his sister, sometimes everybody all at once.  That’s a huge part of the silence now, not hearing her do the voices for <em> The Odyssey </em>, interrupted by Dad saying “Hey, that’s you!” to her everytime Calypso showed up.</p><p>In his restlessness, Troy gets into the grownup files in the medical suite.  The symptom input screen doesn’t work.  Someone wiped the application history before he got there.  Actually, Mama probably kept his surgery records on her ECHO because she kept all of her notes there.  Now they’d all be ashes or gone.</p><p>It takes seasons for the truth to start coming together.  He was never magic.  Sirens are a thing and he’s at least been touched by said thing.  The rest of him, his spells, have an explanation otherwise.  Well, probably.  Maybe.  He’s pretty sure.  </p><p>There’s just so much and getting through it’s more like wandering a maze by touch, retracing his breadcrumbs to what exactly collagen <em> is </em>because it’s 3AM and he forgot.</p><p>Sometimes, Tyreen drags him to bed so she can feed him, ask what he’s found.  “I don’t know,” he tells her and he reads pirate yarns to her instead, her breath tickling his empty shoulder.</p><p>He has the idea one night to stretch her hand in his.  She doesn’t fight him until he gets to the place where most knuckles would resist being tilted back.  Then she bites him.</p><p>She’s <em> bendy </em>, but she’s not as bendy as him when he does the same thing to himself, hand on the wall above them.</p><p>Troy wonders.  He offers to read more.</p><p>~*~</p><p>6.</p><p>“I think I got some kind of connective tissue, umm, problem,” Troy admits, eventually.  </p><p>He and Tyreen have gone out hunting.  He’s fallen more than his usual three steps behind and he’s only saying anything at all because she keeps telling him to quit yawning.   </p><p>Tyreen rounds on him through the sunlight.  “I think sinew’s hard to chew.”</p><p>He smiles since she only knows that from him telling her.  “It’s not that.  It’s really complicated.”</p><p>“Ah, yeah, like everything else about us existing and stuff.”</p><p>“B-but if you got one, you maybe also get migraines and those can happen in your belly.  When you’re really little, it can seem way worse and…” </p><p>“Ugh.  You know, maybe it’s not something you can figure out from reading stuff.”</p><p>“Well, I can’t look at my own guts.”</p><p>“I can look at them for you.”</p><p>Troy doesn’t think he likes the idea of her picking over imaging scans of his insides, and that’s assuming they could still get any of the scanners to work.  Besides, they’d be looking for weird stretches in his blood vessels and those aren’t exactly fixable, not with what he knows or what medical supplies they have left.</p><p>Tyreen sighs, stoops, and unlaces her boots.  She winks, stalking off barefoot.  “Or, you know what, screw this.”</p><p>Troy reacts like she said a swear.  Dad has really been at them about ‘not talking that way’ lately even though they only had each other to overhear for the most part.</p><p>But he strips his shoes off too.  They wander across the dusty, warm stone that is home and hunting mantas.  Troy goes to point at a mere gesture when they come down wind of a big, silky one rummaging for hexlings by a riverbed.   He slams forward with his knife after the glint of her crossbow firing.  She’s hit the manta, but he has to make sure it’s dead, since if it’s not, it will turn to sand when she touches it and that will be that.</p><p>Today there is no sand.  His feet are wet and he thinks his sister’s got a decent enough counter argument.  They never read how to do what they just did.</p><p>~*~</p><p>7.</p><p>Troy might not know the name of his illness, but he gets the state and the workings of it.  It tides in and out.  It flows back.  It waits to crash on his shore.  He can try to stem it.  That will make the moment it breaks worse when it comes.  He has never seen an ocean, so he only knows any of this gravity through his perception of himself.  Maybe he’s stretched the metaphor.  Maybe that’s funny, considering… </p><p>He can’t stop himself anymore than he could do something about the growth spurt nagging at his spine.  He feels it in the same place that pinched in his earliest memory more than he does the cuffs riding up his calves.</p><p>He crosses his fingers that nothing inside of him <em> pops </em>.  He’d like to still have normal sensation too, especially in his hand, when it’s over.  He’d like for it to be over, and quickly if that’s even possible.</p><p>In the end it’s not too terrible.  It comes and it goes, same as anything he knows about his body.  He lies awake thinking he can hear his bones crackling.  The sore spot on his back gets to be semi-permanent and the ring on his belly stretches into an oval.  He’s not sure if his one shoulder was always a bit lower than the other, but now he can’t help but see it in his reflection.  It’s a problem when his toes spread together like ingrown fish fins and he has to fix his boots three times to make them fit, but his hand comes in fairly well, though it starts to make some of the raspy noises the rest of him does when before it was smooth and quiet.</p><p>~*~</p><p>8.</p><p>He scrunches up to sit beside Tyreen at the workbench.  She’s grown too, but now she’s pushing him back, trying to get him to sit up. She mutters something about her light and goes back to the bolt she’s been soldering, her tongue in the corner of her mouth.</p><p>“I’m thinking,” Troy mutters.</p><p>“You’re always thinking.”</p><p>“Rainy night like tonight? It’s too bad we don’t have, you know, tinier tips for the iron.”</p><p>She scowls at him, then reaches up to swat him on the back of the head.  “So what if you’re huge? You’re quiet when we go out.  That’s the important part.”</p><p>Actually, he finds it touching uncomfortable to be the tallest person on the planet.  “I mean, so we could make little things.  Apparently finger splint rings are a thing.” He drops his voice for the last part, but then lifts it again before Dad gets angry at them for whispering.  “Or you could rig teeny tiny bolts or we could pierce our ears and…” </p><p>“I don’t wanna hear none of that!” Dad grumbles from the couch.</p><p>It’s the first time he’s acknowledged Troy in a few days, maybe a few weeks.  Troy turns over his shoulder, almost excited.  He remembers being ‘little man’ or even ‘son’ where now there’s only sometimes ‘your brother’ directed at Tyreen.  He tries to smile, but there’s this weird twinge in his right temple.  It makes his vision swim.  </p><p>He puts his chipped wire relay down and shoves his project box out of Tyreen’s way.  “Ah.  I need to go lie down.”</p><p>She starts to argue about why.  Dad snorts, says <em> slugabed </em>.</p><p>The truth is, Troy’s been dreading this part most, but at least he knows what it is and that maybe the rain set it off.  He goes to the partition he and Tyreen built, takes his half of the decent sheets and a bucket.  He turns off the lights, and watches flickers like manta eyes drifting in what should be blackness for an hour before the pain starts.</p><p>It’s not at all like what he used to happen to his stomach.  This is sharp and grinding.  It feels like his skull wants to crack.  </p><p>He only throws up twice, but he does throw up and that’s definitely Dad laughing outside.</p><p>Mostly, he lies there and his right eye waters as he struggles over the thought: why didn’t Mama tell him? What was she afraid of— him dreading his first aura migraine?</p><p>~*~</p><p>9.</p><p>The man holding him by the chin has a ring on his smallest finger.  Some black metal.</p><p>Troy focuses on it.  Better that than <em> oh shit other people </em>.  Rings are a familiar pain point, same as the spot on his back.  </p><p>The hand feels awful nice despite the tightness.  He’d better not be dreaming (or having the worst aura ever).</p><p>No.  It’s not aura.  This is happening.  There are other people.  One hit him in the stomach with a rifle butt.  Felt way worse than he figured it would, but plenty of things have and some actually <em> haven’t </em>.</p><p>Troy stares at the ring.  He does not bite.  Biting isn’t his job</p><p>He looks the person (the <em> stranger </em>) in front of him dead in her tinted glasses and he chirps, someone at point who needs to know where his hunting partner’s gone.</p><p>Years later, he finds out they were yelling something like “he doesn’t even talk” before Tyreen happened.</p><p>She gets most of them in one shot of her simply being there.  Light and sand fill the air.  The woman with the glasses pops into silicate at one brush, though she still dies screaming.  They all do except for the man with the ring.</p><p>Troy twists his hand backwards and into him, knife drawn and fingers cocked hard around the hilt, a bent and awkward position most people couldn’t flex into.  For him, it smarts, but it’s very possible.  </p><p>The man pops inside.  Blood gushes, warm and wet.  The knife rests too deep for him to fall easily, so he goes down slow into the rainy season dust mud where he shudders the rest of his life out.</p><p>Troy hunches over, gasping.  He hasn’t been breathing.</p><p>His sister lies not far off, rolling around and laughing and kicking her heels.  She is an absolute mess by the time she manages to come around and speak.  “What the fuck just happened!?”</p><p>“I fucking killed a dude!” Troy stammers, pulling at his shirt to get a look at the gore smear he’s now wearing.</p><p>“There were dudes here to kill! That’s the what the fuck part!”</p><p>“I know! I know! I know!” He’s gotten so high up he can’t emote, can’t really make sense.  He ends up wiping his knife on his pantleg, figuring it’s already bloody and what does it matter.  He stumbles to where his sister lies and he kneels with her.  Then he pulls off her boots, tickling her feet, hoping to get her some kind of grounded again.  When that doesn’t work, he bends her toes.</p><p>And she flares them at him, finally wheezing back to sense.  “It’s good I didn’t get ‘em all.  Then we wouldn’t get to raid this guy's corpse for clues!”</p><p>“We get clues, Sis!” Troy’s wailing.  He couldn’t say why.  “We get all this shit.  What should we even fucking do with it!?”</p><p>They sit there in the mud and they laugh and they have no ideas at all.  The future has ripped open far too wide.</p><p>~*~</p><p>10.</p><p>They decide one thing for certain before they make it back to the homestead.  </p><p>“Hey, let’s not tell Dad,” says Troy.</p><p>“You sure you didn’t get brained back there?” Tyreen says back, not really expecting an answer by the tone of her voice. </p><p>So he doesn’t answer. </p><p>She sneaks him into the medical suite to tend to his bruised guts.  She can mostly still get the imagining equipment to work.  He’s not bleeding internally, but there’s still a chance she’ll have to slit him up with a scalpel and drain the inevitable bruise if it refuses to heal.  She has gotten good at that over the years.  It’s almost magic, or would be if he accepted magic anymore.</p><p>“I could do it now,” she offers.  “Might not get all purple.”</p><p>“You just want to hurt me.” Troy smirks and shakes his head.  He pulls what’s left of the sheets up to cover the bottom of his belly and leans back.  His spine cracks in five places.  It hurts, but the hurt fades into some kind of better.</p><p>“Whatever.” She waits for him to get dressed.</p><p>The two of them walk through the front door of the homestead.  Troy at least is cognizant for the first time in years that they live in a damned Vault.  That Nekrotafeyo isn’t everything.</p><p>Neither is his father, snoring drunk on the couch.  Troy looks down at him through the ambient glow of the old view screens playing out their power into the still of the night.  “Is she there?” he asks.  “I-is she there when you dream?”</p><p>Tyreen hums at him.  They head off into their own rooms.  That lasts maybe half a minute before Troy barrels across the partition to Tyreen’s.</p><p>They kneel in the darkness, cradling their spoils and admiring what’s suddenly changed in their lives.  It rains harder against their barely stifled laughter.  The ring doesn’t fit either of them.  </p><p>~*~</p><p>11.</p><p>He got to Pandora.  He was seven again.  He told himself (now drunk on the desert, high on whatever else they could afford) that his spells were spent and he didn’t want any magic, even if magic maybe could be OK after all.  He knew he was lying to himself, even to the part where the really good pot left his joints feeling full of clouds instead of whatever else they’re made of.  </p><p>But it’s been so… his head swims with pain.  None of his thoughts want to come together into words.   </p><p>Tyreen’s talking for him again.  Keeps happening.  It’s fine and he probably looks drunk which is also fine, or something.</p><p>She rents a room.  He has to walk leaning against her back since he’s too tall to slouch on her shoulders.  He hates that suddenly.  He hates the swell of pain more.  </p><p>Rather than turn on the light, Tyreen pulls off her jacket.  The room wells with aqua Siren gleam as she jambs a chair under the doorknob.  Then she’s got him around the waist and she’s pulling him towards the bed.  “Easy there, Bro.  I gotcha.  And you’ve done this before.”</p><p>Troy makes a sound of distress so feeble he doesn’t even know what he was trying to say.  </p><p>They pause.  </p><p>He manages to squeak, “No, I wanna sit on the toilet.”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“It’s one like I usedta get.” His hands go to his stomach.  He’s been stopping himself from doing that.  “Feels better if I can sit with my knees apart.”</p><p>“Fine.  If I gotta piss tonight, I’m pissing on you.”</p><p>Tyreen drags him into the bathroom anyway.  She undoes his belt for him and shoves him down.</p><p>Being under his own weight leaves him dizzy for a handful of instants.  He hunches against his hand, fighting the urges to scream and drool.  The vertigo gets the better of him.  He leans over the sink to vomit before falling back into place in the dark.</p><p>Everything hurts, but there’s this squirming flare around his middle, like something trying to crawl out of him, but doing it slowly.  The visual makes him sick again.</p><p>Then comes the darkness and pain and remembering.  </p><p>Mama’s hands and Mama’s rings.</p><p>The tastes of plum jam and glowbug life and his own broken heart.</p><p>The fact his sister’s been helping him to the bathroom since before she could read.</p><p>The scent of Mama’s grave when it was new.</p><p>One of Dad’s glasses breaking beside his ear.</p><p>Walking barefoot on Nekrotafeyo because it just felt so right.</p><p>The tide he still imagines in his own body.</p><p>The misty shapes he saw in the dark with his first aura.</p><p>The ring he’s got in his pocket now.</p><p>The bruise that rode his guts not long ago.</p><p>Watching the Pandoran sun rise over the wreckage of the shuttle they retrofitted with a stolen jump drive and not knowing if he should laugh or cry.</p><p>The pain eases up in one slow, deep breath.  At least, he’s cognizant of it backing off between one sigh and another.  </p><p>Troy flips on the light.  He needs to see if he’s made a mess.</p><p>Tyreen sits bunched up in the shower with her chin on her knees and her jacket draped over her markings.</p><p>He stares at her a moment.  She mustn’t have moved in however long it’s been.</p><p>“Dying down?” she asks.</p><p>“Think so,” Troy mumbles.  “Been a while.  Wasn’t sure if I was gonna shit my guts out.”</p><p>“No.  You just sat there and moaned the whole time.”</p><p>“Ah, fuck.  That’s embarrassing,” Troy says with disappointment.  He’d thought that part of him was different too.</p><p>Anyway, Tyreen stands, stretches her hips out.  She rinses out the sink and holds some wet tissues to his forehead.</p><p>~*~</p><p>12.</p><p>Troy sleeps for a while.  They still end up leaving before dawn.  The nights on Pandora run that long.  </p><p>Something in the back of Troy’s head still feels like puking.  At least it’s not in his stomach.  </p><p>The road outside of the flophouse lights up with cars, all streaming Eastward.  Probably somebody calling for would-be Vault Hunters.  Anyway, the two of them can follow and drive into the morning.</p><p>Tyreen takes the first turn in the driver’s seat of their SAT-V.  He’s going to tell her he’s riding with his eyes closed.  Wake him when the sky burns up pink so he can watch.</p><p>Instead, she sits there, one hand on the wheel and the other on her chin.  “You said something about Mom’s rings when you were…” It’s funny.  Sometimes she calls Leda ‘Mom’ and sometimes she calls her ‘Mama’.  Like she’s trying to switch and she can’t quite adjust the word every time.</p><p>“Having a spell?” Troy suggests.</p><p>“Heh.”</p><p>“Abdominal migraine, actually.  Supposed to grow out of ‘em, remember.  Guess I grew so much it came back around.” It’s a terrible joke, one with no expectation of laughter behind it.  He kind of hates that he said it.  “Anyway, something about her rings.  Yeah?”</p><p>“I got ‘em,” Tyreen says.  She doesn’t start the car.</p><p>“You <em> what </em>.” She might as well have dropped him on his ass.  If some weird shade of anger surfaces in him first, it’s only what manages to fight its way out of him.  “Ty you gotta stop doing this shit!” He wouldn’t even say it’s something he feels.  The truth of that, no, that’s something much more fragile, full up of wonder and pain.</p><p>“They’re not rings.”</p><p>“Then what are they!?” His voice cracks.  Since: no, he can see them so clearly, resting against his fingers.  They were silver and all scratched up and silver doesn’t burn and… </p><p>“Finger splits.  Like you talked about making.” Tyreen reaches into her jacket.  She takes out a dried air algae purse and turns to look at Troy.  “She had what you have.  Just not as bad.  I guess.  That can be a thing, right?”</p><p>Troy nods.  He holds out his hand.  He makes himself remember in the same moment he has to force himself to stop shaking.</p><p>Tyreen shows him the tangle of battered silver inside, then taps three rings onto his palm.</p><p>They’re very fine work, some heavier than others.  None match.  Tarnish has set into the wear and they smell like must.  There they chime as he moves his fingers, heavy and so real.  </p><p>Troy holds the rings back out to his sister, tapping the one Mama used to wear on her left thumb one with his middle finger.  He says, “Would you put this one on me? Or try.  It probably doesn’t fit.”</p><p>Tyreen shrugs. “I dunno.  She had big hands.”</p><p>Funny they both remember that about her.  Like it’s one thing that has to be true.</p><p> </p><p>Finis</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks to Kingcharon  for the Bordertober inspiration / Reccing "Mercy" by Bo Baskoro.  Without those, I wouldn't have sneezed this out.  And I do actually like sneezing fiction, even if it sounds unpleasant, so there you be.  Originally ran on Tumblr, more or less as is.  Not for sale or rent.  Thank you for reading! Please feel welcome to drop me a line if there's anything you need/want to know about the brats.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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